Sir Paul McCartney may have an estimated fortune of £780 million but the Beatles legend is not averse to saving the odd penny here and there.The 75-year-old was spotted rushing onto a train yesterday just before it pulled out of Charing Cross railway station.Rather than opting for first class, down-to-earth Sir Paul settled down in second class, sitting alongside ordinary commuters and their bicycles. Dressed smartly in a suit and crisp white shirt, Britain’s most famous singer songwriter kept a low profile as he sat quietly on his own in the carriage.

Ollie Wong, 27, couldn’t believe it when the former Beatle got into his carriage.

The recruitment consultant told MailOnline: ‘He was talking on his phone saying ‘I’ve just managed to get on a train. I’m on the train now.’

‘I looked at him and I instantly thought, ‘That’s Paul McCartney!’ I couldn’t believe he was slumming it in second class with me.’

Mr Wong, from Tooting in south London, says that the pop icon – who wore an understated green jacket over his suit and was and carrying a rucksack – seemed deep in thought.

‘He didn’t say anything else as he knew that it might have drawn attention from other passengers.

‘I’m not normally shy when I meet celebrities, but I could tell that he didn’t want any attention, so I just kept schtum too before I got off at London Bridge 10 minutes later.

‘I didn’t recognise his voice on the phone, but his face was so familiar.

‘He was alone and he was dressed really down to earth. He just sat and quietly read.’

He added: ‘It was amazing to see a legend sat in front of you like that.’

It is not known where McCartney was going but he lives with his wife Nancy Shevell, 58, in picturesque East Sussex.

A spokesman for Sir Paul refused to comment, although another source confirmed he is a down-to-earth guy who often travels using public transport.

A day earlier, Sir Paul was pictured pushing his showbiz pal Sir Michael Caine in a wheelchair after he fell and broke his ankle on the actor’s 85th birthday.

The pair were at the British Film Institute screening of Michael Caine’s new documentary, My Generation, on London’s Southbank.

Sir Paul recently put his rare 1967 vintage Lamborghini – which he used from 1968 during the height of Beatlemania – up for sale for £494,000 at auction.

]]>http://www.mccartney.com/?feed=rss2&p=111510Before Spinal Tap, There Was Bad News | Cultured Vultureshttp://www.mccartney.com/?p=11143
http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11143#respondMon, 19 Mar 2018 19:44:09 +0000http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11143Even if you’ve never seen the legendary mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, you probably know the name – either via the ‘these go to eleven’ sequence, which is by far

Even if you’ve never seen the legendary mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, you probably know the name – either via the ‘these go to eleven’ sequence, which is by far the most well-remembered part, or otherwise through their appearance in a classic episode of The Simpsons. It’s only appropriate for a show that parodies everything to feature a parody band, and Harry Shearer being in both projects couldn’t have hurt either. As for ‘these go to eleven’, this became iconic enough that many reviews chose to give the film unprecedented ratings of eleven out of ten.

On the surface of it, it could have been taken for a documentary following a real-life rock band – for every obviously absurd moment, like their drummer exploding, there was something realistic enough that a lot of musicians who saw it found it hit far too close to home. Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler apparently “didn’t see any humour in it”, with the section where the band become hopelessly lost backstage really striking a nerve. Dave Grohl was more positive, but agreed in principle, citing This Is Spinal Tap as “the only rock movie worth watching” in contrast to the sea of other rockumentaries out there.

Initially, in fact, it was taken as real by many viewers – drawing a lukewarm reception at the box office, with audiences presumably wondering why they’d never heard of Spinal Tap before, and wondering if the creators had perhaps misspelled Quiet Riot. The film was only saved from the depths of obscurity by its release on home video, allowing the parody to filter through to an audience who understood it, and prompting the cult following it enjoys today.

However, Spinal Tap were by no means the first spoof band. In the ‘70s, Eric Idle and Neil Innes created The Rutles, a bald-faced spoof of The Beatles that George Harrison himself gleefully got involved in, having always been a fan of the Pythons. But in the ‘80s, the year before Spinal Tap burst onto the scene, the British series The Comic Strip Presents… created a mock band that was taking the piss out of the very same era of ultra-glam, ultra-self important, hair-metally bands that Spinal Tap were poking fun at – Bad News.

The Comic Strip Presents… was close to being an anthology series, with each episode self-contained for the most part, although some, such as Bad News and their ‘The Famous Five’ spoof Five Go Mad In Dorset, received second instalments. The people behind it were all centrepieces of the British alternative comedy movement, and many went on to be very well known indeed – comedy duo French and Saunders were central members, and the series often featured Robbie ‘Hagrid’ Coltrane in guest spots. The core group, though, were Peter Richardson, Nigel Planer, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, the latter three of whom are now perhaps best known from the similarly-anarchic series The Young Ones.

It was these four who made up Bad News, taking on some appropriately rock-style pseudonyms (Edmondson, for instance, was ‘Vim Fuego’) as well as the obligatory outfits, hairspray, and makeup. While they had a very similar aesthetic to the Tap, there were some obvious differences – one, Bad News weren’t as successful, and two, this was because they were clearly a bit crap. This was most obvious with Planer’s near-terminally dim Den Dennis, but by no means limited to him, since Edmondson and Mayall’s characters were eternally locked in the kind of petty squabbling that was always their strength as a duo. Indeed, their first studio album (also called ‘Bad News’) had the tracks punctuated by recordings of the band arguing.

Edmondson’s Vim Fuego, as frontman, was always the face of the documentaries – this is most evident in the first, which begins with a bit of a day-in-the-life segment, showing Vim waking in his scuzzy flat to some incredibly loud metal, only to then be confronted by a large, angry neighbour who works nights. We’re also treated to some of his pearls of rock-and-roll wisdom, such as “I could play “Stairway To Heaven” when I was 12. Jimmy Page didn’t actually write it until he was 22. I think that says quite a lot” and “we’d be as rich as the Stones if only we’d sold as many records as them” before meeting up with the rest of the band.

The first documentary centres on the band taking a road-trip to Grantham to do a live set. Over the course of the trip, they pick up some inappropriately young groupies (it was the ‘80s, after all) and even have their own “up to eleven” moment, the one line that gets relentlessly quoted – Planer’s “two quid for one bloody sausage?”/”Can I have half a sausage for a quid?”. Which is really more about British transport cafes than strictly about the rock band lifestyle, but nonetheless, that line was the breakout star – blame memes, I guess.

Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilminster of Motörhead (and more on him later) always set his microphone unusually high, so he would be looking almost directly upwards while playing. He claimed that he developed this style in the days when they would only be playing to “ten people and a dog”, as “a way of avoiding seeing that we only had ten people and a dog”. When Bad News eventually reach Grantham, despite their handsomely larger-than-life papier-mache skull (prefacing, in its way, the Tap’s undersized Stonehenge), it is an audience of just this kind that awaits them. It is shortly after this that their tenuous relationship with the documentary crew breaks down completely, and they run off with the camera.

The Tap’s creators always leant away from including anything too controversial, given that the band presumably had final say over what made it into the film as it was released, which would have meant the excision of any scenes that involved drug-taking or groupie-banging. As we see in Bad News’s case, they just fiddle about with the camera until it runs out of film – and, eventually, audio-tape – which justifies the more warts-and-all portrayal they received, as they presumably didn’t have access to any editing facilities. For all we know, they never even figured out how to remove the film, and it was only found later, Blair Witch Project-style.

However the documentary eventually made its way onto our screens, it became The Comic Strip Presents…’s most popular episode by far, resulting in the creation of a sequel, More Bad News. Clearly the first instalment did its job, since this long-awaited reunion presented us with a more well-to-do Bad News – still by no means on the Tap’s level, but not a pub band any more either. They had a record contract, were filming a video for their single ‘Warriors of Genghis Khan’, and most excitingly, had been booked to play Castle Donington’s Monsters of Rock festival (“all we have to do now is blow Ozzy off the stage”).

Side note: I realise that in talking about parodies, when you say ‘they did something’ it’s always a little hard to judge exactly what level of reality that’s describing. Obviously in the first instalment, they didn’t actually steal the camera, that was scripted, and those schoolgirls were played by the decidedly legal Dawn French and Serena Evans. So I’d just like to specify now, very clearly, that Peter Richardson, Nigel Planer, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson did indeed play Monsters of Rock ‘86, all in character.

High on the horse with this sudden success, they went about the classic array of rocker hijinks, smashing up hotel rooms, ordering a hundred pints of lager (“Channel 4 are paying, aren’t they?”), and buying out a shop’s whole stock of their album to boost its place in the charts – only to realise much later that the charts can tell when someone’s trying to game them like this. There was trouble again with the production of ‘Warriors of Genghis Khan’ – Colin Grigson (Mayall) stormed off partway through and was missed by no-one, Spider Webb (Richardson) forgot his drums and had to get them cabbed over, Den struggled with his stage directions, and worst of all, Vim attempted to sell the song (lyrics: “burning, looting, raping, shooting [repeat]”) as a ‘poetical-political’ work to Jennifer Saunders’s unimpressed music journalist.

The video is something to behold – a ridiculous cacophony of every scuzz-rock cliché thrown at the wall, and typically here I’d say ‘and seeing what sticks’, but the brilliant part is, it all sticks. It involves anachronistically horned Viking helmets, motorbikes, a post-apocalyptic landscape of rubble mocked up inside a warehouse, and an attractive woman in a red dress, just like in The Matrix. It’s the kind of thing WASP would come up with in some kind of sweaty, viagara-and-cocaine-related fever dream. It’s that special sort of Mel Brooks-style satire where everything about it is being mocked to the hilt, but that simply couldn’t be done without a degree of genuine affection for its subject.

Finally, the day arrived, and the band set off to Castle Donington in ‘The Beast’, a van that was definitely not a hastily retrofitted painting-and-decorating van. It was gloriously tacky, with a ‘skull motif’ up front, and wallpapered in faux-leopardskin (“£8.99 a roll…from a shop called Alexander’s”). And even though Vim mouthed off at festival security and got beaten up a bit, they made it to Monsters of Rock. Just to reiterate, this part was not staged, and as such they were greeted by the traditional volley of bottles full of piss – Mayall mainly used his bass to deflect them. When Edmondson tried to get the audience to join in with the refrain ‘hey hey Bad News’, they chorused back ‘fuck off Bad News’ – a recording of which made it onto the album.

This was interspersed with vox pop-style shots of some of the festival’s other headliners, giving their frank and forthright opinions of Bad News as a band and how they felt about these people who’d gotten into Monsters of Rock on the strength of one shaky documentary. Rudolf Schenker of The Scorpions was particularly blunt (“Scheiße!“), but Lemmy was probably the highlight, and it’s worth reprinting his comments in full:

“I thought Bad News hit a new high in altruistic, self-indulgent. bullshit. mollycoddled mother my dog instinct rock and roll. I thought it was the worst kind of pimply shit of the worst kind of city ghetto probably populated by winos, junkies and general all round fuck-ups.”

And that was coming from a man who was kicked out of space-rock outfit Hawkwind because Canadian border personnel had misidentified his amphetamines as cocaine. Interestingly, this suggests Lemmy didn’t recognise Mayall, Planer, or Edmondson from his brief guest-spot on The Young Ones, and that their glam-rock disguises had done their job.

To return to the internal reality of the show, part two ended with the aftermath of the Monsters of Rock audience receiving the boys even less kindly than they did in real life – with the entire band ending up in hospital, head to toe in bandages, after the crowd rushed the stage in response to Vim declaring himself the reincarnation of Jimi Hendrix. Spider – true to form, as the drummer – blew himself up to escape the mob. And Den, seeing the silver lining, was of the opinion that if Vim died, and they exploited it correctly, it could do the record a lot of good.

The key difference – apart from the relative success of Spinal Tap and Bad News, both as fictional bands and real-life media properties – is that Spinal Tap very clearly stood alone. Bad News, by contrast, fit very clearly into the wider continuity of The Comic Strip Presents… and those involved, particularly Mayall and Edmondson as a duo, as their characters’ relationship in Bad News was recognisable to anyone who’d seen any of their work, from their earliest live shows as ‘20th Century Coyote’ to their comedy series Bottom, which, for non-fans, is a sort of slapstick Waiting for Godot. Planer, too, played a similar character to his previous role as Neil in The Young Ones, using practically the same voice and mannerisms, only dopier and more violent.

Still, if Spinal Tap was too recognisable to be funny to the likes of Aerosmith, then Bad News fills its own vital niche – being too recognisable to be funny to every poor bastard out there who knew their way round an instrument, moussed their hair up just right, dolled themselves up in some ridiculous clingy outfit, and got nowhere, even though to look at the MTV fame funnel that seems to be basically the secret formula.

]]>http://www.mccartney.com/?feed=rss2&p=111430Sandie Shaw thinks John Lennon should have married her | Entertainment | theclevelandamerican.comhttp://www.mccartney.com/?p=11140
http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11140#respondMon, 19 Mar 2018 19:41:00 +0000http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11140Sandie Shaw believes John Lennon would still be alive if he had married her instead of Yoko Ono.The 71-year-old retired singer had a huge crush on the late Beatles legend

Sandie Shaw believes John Lennon would still be alive if he had married her instead of Yoko Ono.The 71-year-old retired singer had a huge crush on the late Beatles legend – who was murdered on December 8, 1980 – from a young age.The two musicians would regularly cross paths during the swinging 60s in Britain but she was never able to progress their friendship to a romance, something she regrets.Sandie – who has two children with Virgin Group co-founder Nik Powell and daughter Gracie Banks with fashion designer Jeff Banks – told the Daily Mirror newspaper: “I loved John and thought he should have married me. He’d be alive today if I had, I would have protected him and taken a bullet for him!”The ‘Puppet on a String’ hitmaker – who is now married to third husband Tony Bedford – first met the ‘I Am The Walrus’ singer at a Beatles concert at The Royal Albert Hall by pretending to be his cousin.Sandie – who received an MBE this year – recalled: “The Beatles were performing at the Royal Albert Hall so I rang up, saying ‘I’m Sandra, John’s cousin. I haven’t seen him in ages, so I will pop in’.”Along I went and John came out, took one look at me and said, ‘I haven’t got a cousin called Sandra’. But then he added, ‘Come in’. Can you imagine? You would never get away with it now.”Lennon was shot dead at the age of 40 by obsessed fan Mark Chapman as he entered the Dakota building, where he shared an apartment with Yoko, in Manhattan in New York City.Chapman was subsequently sentenced of 20 years-to-life in prison, and petition for parole has been denied every two years since 2000.Yoko and Lennon got married On March 20, 1969 after meeting in November 1966 at Yoko’s art unveiling of her artwork, Unfinished Paintings and Objects, at the Indica Gallery in London.Yoko gave birth to the couple’s only child together, Sean Lennon, now 42, in October 1975.This article originally ran on celebretainment.com.

]]>http://www.mccartney.com/?feed=rss2&p=111400Unique Archive of Beatles Photographs for Sale | Fstoppershttp://www.mccartney.com/?p=11131
http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11131#respondMon, 19 Mar 2018 19:38:04 +0000http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11131On March 24, a unique archive of photographs of the Beatles will go on sale and is expected to fetch at least $350,000 at auction. Photographer Mike Mitchell was just

On March 24, a unique archive of photographs of the Beatles will go on sale and is expected to fetch at least $350,000 at auction. Photographer Mike Mitchell was just 18 when he shot the Beatles’ first US concert in 1964, and the 413 negatives with full copyright are available to purchase. Mike’s story of how the photographs came about is compelling.

“I was in a point in my life where I was learning that photography could take me anywhere,” explains Mike, more than 50 years later. Because of the equipment that he had available, Mike shot in black and white without flash and used only available light.

Photographs courtesy of Mike Mitchell and Omega Auctions

Coming two days after The Beatles legendary appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, Mitchell also attended the press conference before the gig at the Washington Coliseum, before photographing them again a month later at the Baltimore Civic Center. With virtually no restrictions, Mitchell shot with the intention of creating portraits rather than merely documenting the events and was able to move freely about the stage, producing an intimate encounter with a group that was bringing something completely different to popular culture.

In 2011, Mitchell produced 46 unique prints, each embedded with a tiny heart-shaped watermark, sold at auction by Christie’s in London. The images were expected to fetch $100,000 but ended up selling for more than three times that amount. Seven years later, Mitchell has decided to sell the complete archive: 413 negatives, the 46 digitally-restored high resolution images, 10 other scans not used for the 2011 prints, and scans of contacts sheets. Mitchell’s archive sat untouched in his basement for decades before he decided to explore their value. One of the iconic images from the collection was so underexposed that it was only through scanning and digital restoration that a viable print was possible. In 2011, estimated at $3,000, the 16×16.25-inch gelatin silver print, signed and numbered 1/1, sold for $68,500.

The images give a remarkable insight into the era, offering a glimpse into the energy that the Beatles brought with them and the palpable optimism of the 1960s. Despite this, one of the magazines that published Mitchell’s photographs didn’t believe the hype and produced a cynical article about the Beatles that saw them as nothing more than a fad. A little jaded, Mitchell says that he then put the negatives into storage inside a box labeled “Beedles” where they remained untouched for almost 50 years.

The archive will go on sale at Omega Auctions (U.K.) on Saturday March 24.

Images courtesy of Mike Mitchell and Omega Auctions. As the copyright of these photographs is being sold, the images illustrating this article will be removed on March 24.

]]>http://www.mccartney.com/?feed=rss2&p=111310City boy’s take on Liverpool ladshttp://www.mccartney.com/?p=11126
http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11126#respondThu, 15 Mar 2018 19:29:59 +0000http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11126Calcutta: The Beatles had landed in India in 1968 in Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Rishikesh ashram from the psychedelic zone of their fame, in a haze of drugs, looking for a

Calcutta: The Beatles had landed in India in 1968 in Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Rishikesh ashram from the psychedelic zone of their fame, in a haze of drugs, looking for a spiritual fix and also to make new music.

One outcome of their visit was the allegations against the Maharishi. Another, their break-up, which followed soon after their return.

In the 50th year of their visit comes Ajoy Bose’s Across the Universe: The Beatles in India, a kind but clear-eyed account of the group’s passage to India. “It is a paradox that the Beatles arrived in India to discover ancient wisdom when we were looking at them as figures of modernity,” Bose said before the launch of his book at Dalhousie Institute in the city on Monday. He was in conversation with singer Usha Utthup and Centre for Studies in Social Sciences chairman Jawhar Sircar. Utthup entertained the audience with a robust rendition of Beatles numbers.

A senior journalist from Delhi, Bose, originally from Calcutta, said he grabbed the offer from Penguin-Random House to write the book on the Beatles, for the group was not just about music. They had spelt rebellion. The length of young Bose’s hair, inspired by the world’s most famous pop group then, was strongly disapproved by his father.

The Beatles’ India trip is well-documented, said Bose, often in their own words. When the Beatles came here, they were still very young, vulnerable, at the height of their fame and trying to cope with the death of their manager, Brian Epsetin, who had been like a father. And there was the drug problem.

Author Ajoy Bose at the launch of the book.
Picture by Sanat Kr Sinha

John Lennon was the most tormented. “He was deepest into the hardest drugs.” Plus there was personal turmoil. His wife Cynthia was at the ashram, as were the partners of the other Beatles, but Yoko Ono was writing him letters.

At the Maharishi ashram, all the four Beatles had different trips. Some of them must have had their minds blown. “Maybe this was the first time they were thinking of themselves as individuals.” Ringo Starr left first, after two weeks, because of a stomach condition, Paul McCartney after one-and-a-half months. Then a friend of the Beatles called “Magic Alex” turned up, and so did the allegations against the Maharishi of sexually molesting white women, and at the end of two-and-a-half months, John left with George Harrison in a huff. John was perhaps already thinking of himself as a former Beatle.

Back home, the Beatles wrote the song Sexy Sadie about the Maharishi, which was released in a gentler version. By 1970, the group broke up.

But India had not happened suddenly to the Beatles. There had been signs. During the shooting of the film Help! (1965), which featured a wacky eight-armed Indian goddess, George had discovered a passion for the sitar within himself. Then he discovered Ravi Shankar. George’s wife Patty had introduced the Beatles to the Maharishi in London.

George was influenced most by India: he considered himself a Hindu.

Patty, George and some others later said the charges against the Maharishi were baseless.

In all this talk of scandal and drugs, what gets obscured is the music, Bose said. “At the ashram they wrote about 30 to 40 songs, including Ob La Di Ob La Da and Back in the USSR, most of which got into The White Album’and some into Abbey Road.”

The most obvious India songs, however, Norwegian Wood and Across the Universe, were written before the Beatles dreamt of coming to India.

]]>http://www.mccartney.com/?feed=rss2&p=111260Beatles photobomb: Iconic photo hides hilarious secrethttp://www.mccartney.com/?p=11122
http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11122#respondThu, 15 Mar 2018 19:23:13 +0000http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11122THE Beatles are one of the most recognised bands of all time. You would be hard pressed to find someone who hadn’t heard of them or didn’t know at least

THE Beatles are one of the most recognised bands of all time. You would be hard pressed to find someone who hadn’t heard of them or didn’t know at least one of their songs. Their Abbey Road album cover is probably the image that comes to mind when most people think of the band and it turns out this iconic picture may also hold the best photo bomb of all time.Die hard fans were able to pick out a number of small details that may have gone unnoticed in a less-famous shot, like Paul McCartney not wearing any shoes, the VW Beetle parked on the street with the license plate LMW 281F and, perhaps most mysterious, the shadowed man standing in the background. Once this detail came to light a number of people came forward claiming they were the mystery man in the photo.Who is this mystery photo bomber? Who is this mystery photo bomber? It is difficult to say with complete certainty who we should be applauding for pulling off the world’s best photo bomb, but most people believe it was an American tourist named Paul Cole.

Mr Cole was tracked down by reporters years after the release of the Abbey Road album, revealing that he wound up in the background of the shoot by complete chance.In a 2004 interview with the Daily Mirror, Mr Cole said he was standing on the street waiting for his wife to finish exploring a museum.“‘I’ve seen enough museums. I’ll just stay out here and see what’s going on outside’,” he recalled telling her.“I like to just start talking with people. I walked out, and that cop was sitting there in that police car. I just started carrying on a conversation with him.”Paul Cole pictured in the background of the cover photo of the Beatle’s Abbey Road album. The band had hired a policeman to block traffic while they completed the photo shoot, with the whole thing taking roughly 10 minutes, according to the photographer Iain Macmillan.“I remember we hired a policeman to hold up traffic while I was up on the ladder taking the pictures,” Mr Macmillan told the Guardian .“I took a couple of shots of the Beatles crossing Abbey Road one way. We let some of the traffic go by and then they walked across the road the other way, and I took a few more shots.”He said the photo that was eventually chosen was number five of six, the only one that had their legs in a perfect ‘V’ formation.The photo bomber can also be seen in the background of the other photos from the shoot.The photo bomber can also be seen in the background of the other photos from the shoot. With all the planning that went into the photo the idea that Mr Cole just stumbled into the back ground is amazing.“I just happened to look up, and I saw those guys walking across the street like a line of ducks,” Mr Cole said.“A bunch of kooks, I called them, because they were rather radical-looking at that time. You didn’t walk around in London barefoot.”What is almost as astonishing is Mr Cole, aka photo bombing professional, had no idea who they were until six months later when he was back home in America.Mr Cole said he recognised the sports jacket and new glasses he was wearing in the photo.Mr Cole said he recognised the sports jacket and new glasses he was wearing in the photo.Source:Getty Images“My wife used to play the organ and a couple wanted her to play a song off the album at their wedding,” he said.“I saw the album and I recognised myself right away. I had a new sports jacket on and I’d just bought new shell-rimmed glasses. I said to my children, ‘get a magnifying glass out and you’ll see me’.”Ironically, Mr Cole said he has never even listened to the album and “couldn’t name a single song”. He died in 2008 aged 98 and there is still speculation around whether he really was the “mystery man” in the famous photo. But it is pretty safe to say, whoever it is, it is going to be hard to top that photo bomb.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is mining performances from induction ceremonies between 2010-2017 for release in a variety of formats in April.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: In Concert will be available April 24 as four DVDs and two Blu-rays featuring 53 live performances from the ceremonies, including: Nirvana’s 2014 performance with Lorde, Joan Jett, Kim Gordon and Annie Clark singing in place of the late Kurt Cobain; Ringo Starr and an all-star cast of friends, including Beatles mate Paul McCartney; Pearl Jam; Journey; Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band; Cat Stevens; Chicago; the Red Hot Chili Peppers; Green Day; Cheap Trick; Deep Purple; Joan Jett & the Blackhearts; Yes; Rush; and more. The video sets will also feature induction and acceptance speeches from the ceremonies.

Five digital Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame: In Concert digital albums, each covering two ceremonies, come out the same day, with bonus performances by Alice Cooper, Donovan, Dr. John, Heart, the Hollies, Darlene Love, Leon Russell, the Stooges, Tom Waits, the Small Faces/Faces, Red Hot Chili Peppers and more.

Included in the sets will be the ceremony-ending jams that bring multiple nominees and presenters together to finish the show. Cheap Trick hosted theirs in 2016, which guitarist Rick Nielsen tells Billboard was “just a great time. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame basically told us what to play and how to play and when to play and all that stuff, and it worked out fine. I think they looked at the roster of who was getting inducted and knew we’d go out there and play like any other show. I think they saw that Cheap Trick’s an energy, a fun band to be around. And also we were the band that had the least conflict of any band going in that year (which included Chicago and Deep Purple), so we were the right guys to close the night.”

Glenn Hughes, who was inducted that year as part of Deep Purple but did not play with the band, wound up singing Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame” with Cheap Trick along with his Purple bandmate David Coverdale. “It was just a great thing to be able to do something on stage that night,” he recalls. “Obviously it would have been great to play with Purple but that wasn’t what they wanted to do, but Cheap Trick were gentlemen and invited us to be with them and it was a fabulous time — just kind of off-the-cuff and maybe even more fun than something more formal with the band would have been.”

This year’s Rock Hall induction takes place April 14 in Cleveland, honoring Bon Jovi, the Cars, Dire Straits, the Moody Blues, Nina Simone and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. It will be, as usual, filmed by HBO for subsequent broadcast.

]]>http://www.mccartney.com/?feed=rss2&p=111190‘If Ringo had been in any other band in history, he’d be universally considered a brilliant drummer’ | Jersey Evening Posthttp://www.mccartney.com/?p=11114
http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11114#respondWed, 14 Mar 2018 22:52:29 +0000http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11114Forget John, Paul, George and Ringo – here’s Adam, Joe, Stephen and Gordon! Yes, The Bootleg Beatles are heading to Jersey this month, with a live show at Fort Regent

Yes, The Bootleg Beatles are heading to Jersey this month, with a live show at Fort Regent (and not the now-defunct Springfield Ballroom, which is where the Beatles themselves played when visiting the Island in 1963).

First formed in 1980 by founding members Neil Harrison and David Catlin-Birch, The Bootleg Beatles – Adam Hastings (John), Joe Kane (Paul), Stephen Hill (George) and Gordon Elsmore (Ringo) – regularly perform to sell-out crowds in arenas and concert halls across the UK and abroad, with an annual slot at Glastonbury Festival that remains a highlight for many festivalgoers – and even a few famous names.

‘We often have big names standing at the side of the stage at Glastonbury and watching us perform,’ says Gordon, speaking over the phone from his UK home. ‘Last year we had the Foo Fighters and Katy Perry in the dressing rooms either side of us, which was quite an unusual combination, and as we performed they watched us play. I thought, “Wow, I didn’t think they’d like us”.’

The 43-year-old musician would certainly seem perfectly suited to take on the role of Ringo, being chatty, good-humoured and, above all, a damn fine drummer – although as Gordon himself is quick to acknowledge, Ringo’s drumming abilities haven’t always received the respect they deserve.

‘Oh, Ringo is massively underrated,’ he says. ‘I think it’s largely because he doesn’t attract attention like the more flashy drummers who hit their drums hard and play up to the audience. By contrast, Ringo is a very understated drummer – he plays to the song, not to the crowd – but he is ostentatiously brilliant, and he was a real part of The Beatles’ genius.’

An easy way to appreciate the subtle complexity of Ringo’s drumming is simply to try to replicate his playing on any given drum kit. It is – as Gordon knows better than most – no easy task.

‘Ask any drummer and they’ll tell you that it’s incredibly difficult to mimic Ringo’s drumming,’ he says. ‘He was naturally left-handed but he played a right-handed drum, which meant he would lead with his left hand where most drummers would lead with their right, and this led to some very strange idiosyncrasies.

‘He was also a wonderfully creative player, particularly in the Beatles’ later years. You may hear Ringo drumming and think it sounds easy, but you just try and play it. It’s not as simple as you think.’

Another reason for Ringo being so perpetually undervalued, says Gordon, is the sheer talent that surrounded him in the group.

‘If Paul McCartney hadn’t been a songwriter, then he’d still be considered a great singer. And if he hadn’t been a singer or a songwriter, then he’d still be considered a fantastic bassist. My point is that there was just so much talent between them that it didn’t matter how great Ringo was, he was always going to be overshadowed by Lennon and McCartney and George Harrison. But if Ringo had been in any other band in history, he’d be universally considered a brilliant drummer.’

A brilliant drummer he may be, but even Ringo’s biggest fans would admit that his singing voice is far from the most versatile in rock and roll. Nevertheless, the erstwhile Richard Starkey’s droll – and unmistakably Scouse – vocals were capable of being surprisingly expressive, and even rather touching (listen to his gently crooning turn on the gorgeous Good Night from 1968’s The White Album). Typically, Ringo would receive a single lead vocal on each Beatles album and, in keeping with this, Gordon similarly performs a lead vocal at every Bootleg Beatles concert.

‘I usually sing Act Naturally [from 1965’s Help!], although With a Little Help From My Friends always goes down well, too,’ he says. ‘I would estimate that the casual music fan probably knows around 50 to 75 Beatles songs, but obviously we can’t fit 75 songs into a single show. People will sometimes say, “How come you didn’t play I Feel Fine?” and, well, if we’d played I Feel Fine then we’d have had to drop She Loves You or A Hard Day’s Night, and so on. The Beatles just had so many good songs.’

This particular point is highlighted by the number of quality songs that Lennon and McCartney wrote and then simply gave away to other artists.

‘They didn’t think much of I Wanna Be Your Man so they just gave it to the Rolling Stones, who then had a hit with it. Billy J Kramer had a few big hits with their songs as well [Kramer’s version of Bad to Me topped the charts in 1963]. They were their own competition.’

Born and raised in Gloucestershire, Gordon first discovered the music of the Beatles while listening to his parents’ records as an awestruck pre-teen in the early 1980s.

‘It wasn’t long after John Lennon had been murdered and so there was a real spate of Beatles-related news. My mum and dad had bought me a few of Paul McCartney’s solo LPs, such as Band on the Run, and also the Beatles’ Please Please Me, which has Twist and Shout on it. After that, I started going to record shops with my pocket money and buying Beatles records. I bought Rock ‘n’ Roll Music and Rock ‘n’ Roll Vol. 2.’

Later, Gordon came to appreciate Ringo’s seminal drumming on such classic albums as Rubber Soul and Abbey Road, which in turn led to him moving to London as a plucky 19-year-old with ambitions of becoming a professional drummer.

‘I was in several tribute bands, including a few Beatles tributes like the Paperback Beatles and the Complete Beatles. I was in a few original bands as well and we even got signed, but it never really went anywhere.’

It was the departure of long-time member Hugo Degenhardt from the Bootleg Beatles in 2016 that saw Gordon joining the ranks of the successful touring act.

‘We recently performed Sgt Pepper in its entirety and backed by the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, which was quite an experience. I’m the drummer and so I’ve got the orchestra directly behind me and the band in front, and the sound was just absolutely amazing, especially during A Day in the Life.’

The Bootleg Beatles haven’t always kept such prestigious company, however, and throughout the first decade or so of their existence – from 1980 through to the early 1990s – the group rarely played anything larger than an everyday pub or club.

It was in the mid-1990s that the group’s popularity suddenly soared, as the Britpop boom swept the nation and with it a whole swathe of bands for whom the Beatles were considered legends. A renewed fascination with the Fab Four duly took hold, further bolstered by the release of the Beatles’ acclaimed Anthology series, and this in turn led to an upsurge of interest in the Bootleg Beatles, who promptly landed supporting slots with David Bowie, Oasis and the Manic Street Preachers.

‘I think the thing with Britpop, it was all very 1960s-related,’ says Gordon. ‘Personally, I was listening to Revolver a lot around that time and I found it sounded incredibly contemporary. There wasn’t that distance that you would expect from a 30-year-old recording. The record has really stood the test of time, as has much of their material.

‘Most bands don’t really have a shelf life of more than two or three years, but the Beatles’ popularity remains consistent. We’re very fortunate in that respect.’

Before he disappears for the latest Bootleg Beatles rehearsal session, I ask Gordon what, if push comes to shove, would he say is his all-time favourite Beatles song and album?

‘Ah, I couldn’t pick a favourite song because there are so many,’ he laughs. ‘But my favourite album is Abbey Road. I love all of the albums, but this is my favourite.

‘Despite their differences at the time, the Beatles’ production, experience and ability all came together to create this perfect album.’

The Bootleg Beatles will be performing at Fort Regent on Saturday 17 March. For more details, or to book, visit eventbrite.co.uk. For more info on the Bootleg Beatles, visit bootlegbeatles.com.

Read more at https://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/features/2018/03/13/if-ringo-had-been-in-any-other-band-in-history-hed-be-universally-considered-a-brilliant-drummer/#fDlqbKzeeXhXyDjK.99

]]>http://www.mccartney.com/?feed=rss2&p=111140Memorial garden for ex-Beatle – Henley Standardhttp://www.mccartney.com/?p=11111
http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11111#respondMon, 12 Mar 2018 20:10:01 +0000http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11111THE widow of George Harrison has agreed to support the creation of a memorial garden in Henley. Mayor Kellie Hinton wrote to Olivia Harrison to see if she would back

THE widow of George Harrison has agreed to support the creation of a memorial garden in Henley. Mayor Kellie Hinton wrote to Olivia Harrison to see if she would back the idea and her husband’s charity confirmed she was in favour. The town council will now work with Mrs Harrison and the Material World Foundation to find a suitable location. Plans for a memorial in the town have been mooted for years. Mrs Harrison was against plans for a statue to the former Beatle, who lived at Friar Park. Councillor Hinton said: “We were only comfortable doing something if Olivia was going to support us.“We know from previous discussions that she did not want anything near the house. We looked at locations in Mill and Marsh Meadows, which are tranquil and by the river. There were other areas we looked at which could be suitable.”The Mayor met with representatives of the foundation in October, when they discussed the possibility of a garden.Cllr Hinton said: “We had a 45-minute meeting and went over some of the possible locations, which they could look at in their own time. On the same day we had a message saying they wanted to do it. “From there it was something the Henley in Bloom committee was going to look at. There has been nothing decided on funding or location.“I would love to see it happen. One of the things we don’t celebrate enough is the fact that George and Olivia chose Henley as their home.”The idea of a memorial was first suggested in 2001 following Harrison’s death.In January 2013, Mrs Harrison wrote to the Henley Standard saying: “A more appropriate way of honouring his memory in Henley would be to support a community project.”This led to the Music on the Meadows festival.The Harrisons moved to Friar Park in the Seventies.

]]>http://www.mccartney.com/?feed=rss2&p=111110Teenager’s rare Beatles photos of first US tour expected to sell for £250,000 – Independent.iehttp://www.mccartney.com/?p=11108
http://www.mccartney.com/?p=11108#respondMon, 12 Mar 2018 20:05:10 +0000http://www.mccartney.com/?p=111081 Paul McCartney and John Lennon in one of a series of shots of The Beatles’ first US concert tour (Mike Mitchell/Omega Auctions) A teenage photographer’s shots of The Beatles’

1Paul McCartney and John Lennon in one of a series of shots of The Beatles’ first US concert tour (Mike Mitchell/Omega Auctions)

A teenage photographer’s shots of The Beatles’ first US concerts are expected to sell for £250,000 at auction.

Mike Mitchell, just 18 at the time, snapped hundreds of never before seen photographs of the band’s performances at the Washington Coliseum and the Baltimore Civic Centre in 1964.

He also attended a press conference ahead of the Washington performance – their first in the US – and the band’s arrival at Union Station.

(Mike Mitchell/Omega Auctions)

One shot, taken from behind, shows the back of each of the fab four’s heads other than John Lennon who is turned to the side talking to his bandmates.

The negatives, taken only with ambient light since Mitchell had no flash, sat for decades in his basement until they were fully realised as luminous records with the emergence of digital technology.

The complete archive is made up of more than 400 negatives from the two concerts – 46 of which were seen for the first time in 2011 when they were digitally restored as high quality prints and sold at a Christie’s auction in New York for an accumulated 362,000 US dollars (£224,000).

(Mike Mitchell/Omega Auctions)

The entire collection – including the negatives and copyright of the those sold in New York – are to be unveiled and sold at a Beatles auction in Merseyside later this month.

Apart from the 46 images used in 2011, the remainder have never been seen.